Bermuda, Eastern Caribbean itineraries the foundation of success for Explorer of the Seas

BAYONNE, N.J. — The eight-year success story of the Explorer of the Seas’ itineraries from the New York area has been largely written by the attraction and the variety of the ports.

The foundation of the itineraries are the 5-night (Bermuda, with overnights), which leaves Bayonne on a Saturday, and the 9-night (Bermuda and Eastern Caribbean), which leaves on a Thursday. Both, obviously, leave every second week from spring to fall.

Around them comes the variety — fall foliage cruises to Canada, longer cruises to the southern Caribbean and week-long cruises to the Bahamas.

But the 5-and-9s are the heavyweights.

The “5” to Bermuda gives busy New Yorkers a chance to escape and only take three days off work. The “9” stops in Bermuda, then continues to — in our case — St. Maarten, St. Thomas and San Juan, Puerto Rico. And while there are many things you can do on these temperate islands, we’ve opted to single out one idea you can consider for each.

Bermuda: Take a ferry. Take a bus. Take a ferry. Buy a $15 day pass and you can do all three, starting with the short ferry ride from Kings Wharf where the Explorer docks to Hamilton, the Bermudan capital. If you’re ambitious and in shape, you can walk but that cuts into valuable time you can spend in

This is the Bermuda ferry that takes you from Kings Wharf to Hamilton

Hamilton or, after the bus ride, St. George’s, a smaller and pleasant town on the northern coast. From there, another ferry takes you back to Kings Wharf.

St. Maarten: Whether you’re a first-time visitor or a regular, you’ll never tire of going to the airport. That’s right, the airport. In reality, it’s the beach at Maho Bay, which is at the end of one runway at Princess Juliana International Airport. It’s a $3 ride to get there from Philipsburg, where tourists gather to watch the planes land and take off — some of them jets, not the small craft pictured above (Have you any idea how hard it is to photograph a jet plane when it’s that close to your head?). It’s the closest you’ll ever come to a plane in flight from the outside and if you need to fill the time between arrivals, there’s a beach restaurant — Sunset Bar and Grill — with excellent food and drinks and a small casino is nearby. It makes for a fun day.

St. Thomas: The jewel of the Virgin Islands cost the Americans just $25 million in gold when purchased from Denmark in 1917. Today, a place called Magens Bay is worth more than that alone. This one is for beach people. Locals proudly point out it has been ranked as one of the top 10 beaches in the world, and a mile of white, smooth sand is part of the reason why. It might be the island’s most popular tourist attraction and, while it comes with a $4 entrance fee for tourists, it offers all the modern-day beach amenities, which is to say ample parking, plenty of benches, acres of coconut and mangrove trees, and the latest in changing facilities.

Free bus easiest way to get around Old San Juan

San Juan: Everybody needs to walk around Old San Juan, at least once, and that’s usually where the cruise ships dock. At least, that’s where the Explorer docks. You don’t have to be especially fit to walk the cozy streets but if it’s onerous, there’s always a trolley that circles the area every half hour, and it costs nothing. Of the places we’ve visited, we enjoyed the fort called San Cristobal, a testament to how Puerto Rico belonged to Spain for 400 years and the U.S. for the last 112. It took three dollars to get in and three hours to get out.

After Bermuda, two of the other three are almost always on the itinerary, with the Dominican Republic, Nassau and Royal Caribbean’s private island at Labadee adding even more variety as substitutes.

All for now.

This is the second and final blog about Explorer of the Seas by my associates at Cruising Done Right, Bob and Nancy Dunn. You can check out their blog five days a week at cruisingdoneright.com.